The Drow stopped in his tracks as a vision hit him -no, not a vision, but a memory:

     He was on the road with his father, and they were going to enlist for the army. Not the human army – they wouldn’t stoop quite that low – but an army of their own, to answer the various crimes against nature and Elvenkind. He couldn’t wait; the tales of battles valiantly fought had charmed him into that something that is akin to bloodlust, and his wolf Slash was hunting somewhere off to the left with the shared excitement. His father had been teaching him what few battle spells he knew but they weren’t enough, so he was bent on improving them somehow.

     He was so focused on it, as he rode, that he heard the whistling of a feathered shaft but barely registered the sound before his father groaned and fell out of the saddle. He wrenched his horse around and faced the bowman – a hideous little thing with a huge, bulbous nose and even larger ears that drooped over at the tops and looked as if they could be drawn across the pig-like eyes. With the absence of lips, the thing’s rotting teeth were hidden by an almost seamless mouth and the fact that the thing seemed to have no chin. And it had just killed his father. He screamed wordlessly, his grief and anger and bloodlust all coming out in a howl that brought Slash and Nightwind racing to the scene. Before the wolves were halfway there, however, he had sped his horse at the Gnome and –and was frozen in a scream that could now be attributed to the magic flaying of every nerve in his body.

     He shook his head, pushing the memory away and grasping desperately for the story that they had ground into his mind: His father had died in glorious battle –against other elves. They were of a special race, a more prominent race of elves, the Drow, and now he was the last of this breed. He controlled the blood magic raging through him as he could not master the pain of…before. Now he was the master of pain. He was feared by most, and the less wise quickly died trying to best him. He fought melee with a trident enscribed along the shaft with runes of power and warning; shot arrows made completely of flame from an enchanted oxhorn bow. He could kill with a look, though he usually preferred to show off and make arcane gestures. After all, he figured, the harder it looks, the lower your estimation in your opponents’ eyes.